Ask a group of guitarists to name their favorite guitar solo, and
there’s a pretty good chance someone will mention Eric Clapton’s solo on
the live recording of “Crossroads,” from Cream’s 1968 Wheel’s of Fire album.

So then, whose solo does Eric Clapton like? On more than one occasion he has singled out Duane Allman’s breakthrough performance on Wilson Pickett’s R & B cover of the Beatles’ “Hey Jude.”

In late 1968 Allman was about 22 years old and had not yet formed the
Allman Brothers Band. Eager to make a name for himself, he showed up at
Rick Hall’s now-legendary FAME Studios
in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to offer his services as a session
guitarist.

Hall told Allman he already had more guitar players than he
could use. Allman asked if he could just hang around the studio and help
out if the need should ever arise.

“I mean, this was Duane,” Hall said
to Allman’s biographer Randy Poe. “He was hell-bent for stardom and
nothing was going to stop him.”

Hall let the young guitarist hang around, and before long he was playing on a few sessions with Clarence Carter. Hall liked what he heard, and Allman’s crucial moment arrived shortly
afterward, when the former Stax recording artist Wilson Pickett showed
up at the studio unexpectedly.

“Pickett came into the studio,” says
Hall, “and I said, ‘We don’t have anything to cut.’ We didn’t have a
song. Duane was there, and he came up with an idea. By this time he’d
kind of broken the ice and become my guy. So Duane said, ‘Why don’t we
cut “Hey Jude”?’ I said, ‘That’s the most preposterous thing I ever
heard. It’s insanity. We’re gonna cover the Beatles? That’s crazy!’ And
Pickett said, ‘No, we’re not gonna do it.’ I said, ‘Their single’s gonna
be Number 1. I mean, this is the biggest group in the world!’ And Duane
said, ‘That’s exactly why we should do it - because [the
Beatles single] will be Number 1 and they’re so big. The fact that we
would cut the song with a black artist will get so much attention, it’ll
be an automatic smash.’ That made all the sense in the world to me. So I
said, ‘Well, okay. Let’s do it.’

The original Beatles version of “Hey Jude”
is over seven minutes long. Pickett was determined to keep his version
shorter, to make it suitable for radio play.

At four minutes long, it
was still more than a minute longer than the average popular song from
that era. Most of the extra time is taken up by Allman’s explosive rock
and roll-style guitar solo.

“From the moment Duane plays the first lick
ten seconds into the coda,” writes Poe, “until the song fades out over a
minute later, it is entirely his show. The background vocalists are
singing those familiar ‘na-na-na-na’s’ - but it’s all for naught. Rick
Hall has pushed them so far down in the mix, they are merely ambiance.
Absolutely nothing matters but Duane’s guitar.”

When it was over,
everyone rushed to hear the playback. Hall was so excited he picked up
the telephone and called Atlantic Records producer and executive Jerry
Wexler, who had sent Pickett to Muscle Shoals. Writes Poe:

Hall cranked up the volume, held the
receiver near the speakers, and played the recording all the way
through. The guitar player, naturally, blew Jerry Wexler away. “Who is
he?” Wexler asked. Hall told Wexler that Pickett called him Sky Man. He
said that Sky Man was a hippie from Florida who had talked Pickett into
cutting the tune. Wexler persisted. “Who the hell is he?” “Name’s Duane Allman,” Rick replied.

Before Pickett christened Allman “Sky Man,” the guitarist already had
a nickname he was fond of: “Dog.” In keeping with it, he always wore a
dog collar wrapped around his right boot, like a spur. So the two
nicknames were combined, and Allman was known thereafter as “Skydog.”

Although Pickett recorded “Hey Jude” against his will, he liked the
result so much he made it the title song of his next album.

And right
about the time the Beatles’ version was coming down after nine weeks at
number one on the American charts, Pickett’s version started going up. It peaked at number 15 on the R & B chart and number 23 on the pop
chart.

When Clapton first heard Allman’s solo on his car radio, he reportedly
pulled over to the side of the road to listen. “I drove home and called
Atlantic Records immediately,” Clapton said. “I had to know who that
was playing guitar and I had to know now.”